Rose George travelled 14,500km – from Felixstowe, in England, to Singapore, via Rotterdam, the Suez Canal and the pirate-infested waters of the Gulf of Aden – on the Maersk Kendal, one of the 40,000 container ships that traverse the oceans to bring us our material goods. It's a tedious, boring, wearying trip these sailors make, month after month, year after year. In a work of great insight and sympathy, George conveys the monotony and loneliness of the modern commercial sailor's life while also describing the omnipresent dangers that await him (he is almost always male) in the form of "weather" (storms), pirates and, not least, unscrupulous shipping companies. George's gift for research provides background stories of torture by pirates, demented whales, and inspiringly, an Irish priest ministering to lonely seamen at Christmas.
